Welcome back! In part one of this April 2024 series, I talked about the amazing superbloom that was happening throughout the park and showed the flowers, animals, and hikes that Aneel and I saw during our two weeks in Inks Lake. Now I’m back (better late than never) to talk about the total eclipse itself.
Aneel and I had been talking about and looking forward to this total eclipse so close to home for a few years. Although we’d already experienced one total eclipse before (August 2017 in St. Louis), we were very excited to be able to see another from our own back yard… back State Park? Then starting a couple of weeks before the eclipse, everyone started to get nervous. So many people had plans and had been looking forward to it, and literally… it was THE topic of conversation for at least a week because the weather looked like it was not going to cooperate at all. Not just cloudy weather was predicted, but rains and potential big storms. I wasn’t too nervous until just a couple of days beforehand because weather is too unpredictable to really forecast early, right?
The forecast did look slightly better getting closer to the big day, but nearly full cloud coverage was still predicted. Aneel and I woke up that morning and talked about our options. Like the partial eclipse in 2023, should we drive to a close-ish location with less cloud coverage? No, we decided to hope for the best and comforted ourselves that if we missed it, we’d already had a great total eclipse experience in 2017.
That morning and afternoon—the park was very full. Everyone had their chairs pulled out, their glasses ready. I worked that morning, but we started our watch at noon.
The hour and change leading up to the eclipse is an interesting experience. I would look up with glasses on to see the sun fairly frequently but read and meander around quite a bit too. Apparently, I don’t have the attention span one needs to stare at the sun as the moon slowly, slowly creeps over the sun. Also, it’s a little more dramatic to take pauses and check back in and see how the moon coverage has significantly changed.
The weather leading up to the peak eclipse was PERFECT. As we’d experienced during the partial eclipse, cloud coverage moving through actually adds to the experience. You can take great pictures, and it makes the sun through the glasses look really beautiful.
It gets slowly darker, but ever so slowly… even when only a little sun is peeking through, it still seems like a typical overcast day. And then fairly suddenly, the moon covers the sun completely, you can look at the sun without your glasses, and everything seems almost like it’s night time. Not quite… maybe like the gloaming. It’s such a weird, magical feeling.
The park was a great place to be during the total eclipse. We were very, very lucky and had cloud clearance through much of the eclipse and during the total eclipse. Park visitors cheered and celebrated.
Then, after only four and a half, the sun starts appearing again. We watched as the moon coverage slowly moved away. To try to avoid traffic jams on the way home, we went on one more hike and had an early dinner. Traffic was still a little congested on the way home but not bad.
And we were very happy to see our cats upon arrival.
